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Monday, August 27, 2012

Book Review: 'No Alphabet in Sight New Dalit Writing from South India: Dossier1: Tamil and Malayalam'; Edited and Introduced by K Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu

‘I
don’t think I am a poet yet. On the primordial grasslands of my people, there
is poetry. I might yet become a poet when I get there. That will be my true
poetry.

(Raghavan
Atholi; The Poet with a Forest Fire Inside, Pg. 345)

1

O!
My God! I have just finished reading of the 650 page ‘No Alphabet in Sight
New Dalit Writing from South India’ a book edited and introduced by K
Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu. I have bought this book paying money from my
pocket! Its price is 600 (sorry, actually 599!), that means each of its page
costs Rs 1. I picked it up when the book was released at a function organized at
the EFLU campus. I wished the book to possess, for I wished the authors’
signatures on it. And I got it. When I purchased it, I soliloquised that, one
day I would read it, if not today or tomorrow. Today is that day when I
devoured this book. It was the time to go to Germany and I wanted some books to
carry with me. I could select any of the books I had in my room, but I
preferred this one. My brother frequently asked me whether I would take this
book with me. It is a very heavy considering its heaviness and its content. I
said him, yes, but he tried to put out of sight in thinking it would be too
weighty to be carried. Actually Nehru compelled me to take this book with me!
Nehru? Yes, in my seventh class, I have read a lesson about Nehru and his words
about book. If we respect a book, we are actually respecting its author(s).
Prof. Satya Narayana and Prof. Susie Tharu edited this book. I hoped both would
guide me if I took this book with me.

2

me with Prof. Susie Tharu

For
my MPhil, my research query was the (im)possibility of a dalit literature in
Kerala and again the (im)possibility of a community formation among dalits.
When I completed reading this book, I suddenly memorized my thesis. One of the tactics to disprove is, comparing Kerala dalit life with
the life of Maharashtra where a strong dalit movement and literature emerged
out. As the book argues that comparing a dalit life in a state like Kerala to
the dalit in Bihar is very problematic. It actually reduces the issue of the
entire dalit problems into a very few issues like untouchability or two tumblers
system, but the marginalization of dalits are multifaceted and diverse. Anywhere
in the book, they are not comparing their lives with other states of India to
prove that as everywhere, the South also has a dalit literature, but it speaks
only the two states, and its multiple possibilities of dalit writing. Dalits
are not a homogenous category so as their stories. Everybody contributes to the
dalit literature in their own way. There are sturdy internal criticisms,
multiple voices and solutions to face the challenges, celebration/ demolition
of the same political and social idols, a parallel dalit feminist critique, but
all journeys flow for a common cause. The book is not narrating a homogenous
dalit experience or dalit literature, each page of the book is a small stream
which reaches to the ocean at last. The pages are colourful, but powerful
current as in a river. Don’t expect it’s only a downward river which reaches to
the ocean. It also diverts somewhere and goes in search of upwards current. But
whatever way it goes, it reaches to the ocean called dalit literature. This is
not a simply a Dossier as the book claims. It is not a simple collection of
diverse writing of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, but its introduction itself is influential
to make a separate book. The introduction is detailed the miniature events happened
in the states. When this introduction is added to the first pages, the book
broadens its length beyond a just dossier. By giving its name ‘No Alphabet in
Sight’ the authors successfully overcome the issue of an alien title for the
book. The title is a title of a Malayalam book, so the authors act as they have
nothing added new. The description of the authors are very helpful to understand
the background of the writers and their diverse life.

me with Prof. Satyanarayana

The book celebrates the dalit life, most of the
writers of the book are dalits by birth, not they are thematically dalits. All
the writings start from internal criticism and develop to trouble the accepted
notion of establishments. They question everything, untouchability,
landlessness, Hindutva agenda, law against the conversion, poverty No dalit
writer says meaningless stores, but a story with a social mission. This 650
pages are impressively engraved the everyday realities of the South India
States, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This book is a proof for an undeniable truth
that there is a strong dalit life narrative emerging out even from extreme
south of India. Can one who is not a dalit write dalitliterature? Just listen,
what Vizhi. Pa. Idayaventhan says:

‘Well,
let me give you the example of Sujata who wrote a story about hunger. I also
have a story called ‘choru’. Their sadam (the Brahmin tem for
cooked rice) and my choru (the lower caste term) are different. Hunger
for me is my experience, but it is also that of my children and my forefathers’
(pg. 169).

Some
of them inspire other dalit brethrens with the way they lived. For example,
Sreedhara Ganeshan says, ‘To write Vaangal I stopped working for six
months, living off a cup of tea and one meal a day. The 1000 page work was edited
down to 500 for publication’

When you start
reading this book, you may feel as you enter into a burning forest. The fire is
so powerful which burns the injustice which is done against the indigenous
people. The dalits start to read everything, literature, history, aesthetics,
philosophy and all types of stereotyping. Dalits are well aware that they are
not attempting to interpret everything in a parallel or opposite of the excising
aestheticism. . But dalit practice is not a reflection of any one unity,
rather it encompasses a variety of presences, complexities, experiences and
absences. The dalit manifestoes of the seventies addressed this condition in
which all the elements were interconnected or mixed. (KK Baburaj, Pg. 371). The
categories like opposite, alternative, secular, and parallel are delineated by
western systems of thought, and the processes of pollution and invisibilization
on the East are both in a state of crises. At this juncture, along with the
emergence of new subjectivities, discourses of the multitudes are also taking
central stage.

with Prof. Susie Tharu

Everywhere
we must expect an opposite voice in between different castes, each writing may
be the controversial each other, but after all, this all controversial,
divergent writing are called dalit writing, because dalit life is not
unilinear. Dalit studies challenges the objectivity of knowledge and endorses
the view that different belief systems and contradictory interpretations are
possible. For example, Mathivannam is not convinced by Ravikumar, Sivakami and
others who say that Periyar is an enemy of dalits and that he retarded their
development and so on. On the contrary, he feels that Periyar and the movement
he initiated have done many things for the upliftment of dalits. The recovery
of Iyothee Thass, a Tamil dalit Buddhist scholar in the 1990s by some dalit
writers, Mthivannam argues, an attempt to uproot the inclusive ideology of
Periyar. Thass belonged to one dalit caste (parayar) and he worked for that
caste group. So to him, the attacks on Periyar are a result of a union between
the past Brahmin and the present Brahmin. Actually this argument is not so
trivial; the whole Tamil dalit intelligentsias are divided in this issue that
who is the dalit hero Periyar or Iyathee Thass. Ravikumar very plainly argues
that the lineage of dalit is a Brahmin one (The original Brahmin- the Buddhist
who were destabilized by the false Brahmins sometimes after the 10th
Century- suffered innumerable hardships, pg. 269) and he goes on for saying
Periyar did not do anything for dalit and abolition of untouchability in Tamil
Nadu.

He
concludes his article, ‘Re-reading Periyar’

Ambedkar
concludes his book, what congress and Gandhi Have done to the untouchables
thus: ‘The untouchables will still have ground to say: ‘Good God! Is this man
Gandhi our savour?’ if the deeds of Periyar are analysed the dalits in Tamil
Nadu would ask a similar question: Good God! Is this man Periyar our savour?

Some
argue dalits should grab the ‘best’ language with wonderful style and all, and
other argue, dalits should write in their own languages. For example, Azhakiya
Periyavan says, ‘I am a conscious stylist, but you must remember that I am also
landless! People tend to believe that dalits are ugly and that we use an
unrefined cheri bhasha. I want to respond to those criticisms by writing
consciously in a literary style about dalit life.’ (pg. 231). Must dalit
writers criticise dalit life? Still there are numerous stands about it, but
Sivakami strongly bringing out a possible dalit woman writing through her
novels.

3

If
I am asked to make a choice the most striking articles/stories from the
dossier, what writings would I select? It is actually very easier said than done
to select such a limited number of books from a huge collection. All are much thought
provoking, enthralling writings. Another problem is articles, poems and stories
are not the same genre. So my selection is very much subjective the seven most
striking writing are;

Rock
by MB Manoj (Pg: 530)

The
Unwritten and Writing: Dalits and the Media by Ravikumar
(pg: 266)

Kukai
by cho.Dharman (pg.104)

Narrativizing
the History of Slave Suffering by Sanal Mohan (535)

The
Show
(Abhirammi) (Pg: 75)

Ghost
Speech by C Ayyappan (351)

Scavenger’s
Son in the Collective Thinking of Tamil Writers
by Mathivannan (Pg. 216)

I
must explain why I select these seven writings as very unusual.

Rock
is an extra ordinary dalit poem written with some unimaginable imageries and
symbols. Each line of the poem is a long essay. Nobody has written what is a
dalit poem in an easy way than Manoj wrote. It declares that when vein of a
Muslim League activist oozes green blood and Marxist dark red, but for a dalit
when s/he is stabbed s/he produces black blood! Remember the proverb, ‘better
is to be a lion in day than be a rock for 1000 years’ so italso denies the main stream idea of a valour,
chivalric notions like lion and tigers and instead prises the importance of
being a rock which has the years long experience, patience and it silently
witnesses the fall and raise of communities. The least wanted and ever time
unnoticed things like mud, rock, pebbles are never exampled in Malyalee
aesthetic sense. Manoj dares to associate with it and hence goes in search of a
dalit root. We see rocks everywhere but we don’t know when it emerged there. IN
geography books we learn rocks are the result of powerful volcano, but we never
see (but in TV of course!) in a volcano, the lava makes the rocks. In a place
like Kerala this rock formation actually happened in a thousand years ago. Here
the vocabulary of rock and dalit speaks the same. Both are the ancestral and
inhabitants of the land. When a rock is demolished, the history, literature,
poem of the rock is buried forever and only with lava the rock is created. Here
the poet warns the privileged class of literary world, that if you people try
to destroy the indigenous glory from the literature, the result will be
powerful volcano again. In this poem there are pains of a yearlong negligence of
the authority, anger of being sidelined. The poet also equates the sufferings
of dalit with the sufferings of the Black people. Both are born with the
disease of being unaccessed to the society. The notion of colour is also
questioned here. Black is beauty, black beauty. The beauty of a rock is its colour
of being black. So this strong imagery dismantles the very notion of beauty
associated with any other privileged colour. And also it brings forth a new
kind of beauty concepts. The image of rock is also an attempt to associate
dalits to the nature. It strongly attacks the greediness of the
capitalist/savarna/mainstream idea of destroying everything and exploiting
everything for his/her own sake. Rocks (dalits) are the very indigenous, ancient
inhabitants of the world. Its pebbles are always neglected. Because of its lack
of visible power, people try to pull down or destroy it. for poet, the pebbles
of the rock are the sons and daughters of the dalits.

The Unwritten and Writing: Dalits and the MediaRavikumar’s
article, The Unwritten and Writing: Dalits and the Media is quite
impressive and incredible. He tries to find out a parallel media history for
dalit. The immediate reason for his enquiry was the celebration of The
Hindu’s 125th anniversary on 13th September 2003. In
such a juncture, he traces the dalit media history in Tamil Nadu. His finding
is very notable. Reclaiming against the main stream history of magazine
production in Tamil Nadu, Ravikumar discovers Iyothee Thass, whose work has
witnessed a revival in the post- Ambdekar centenary phase, has recorded the
fact that the Parayar were the first to publish Tamil magazines in the Madrass
presidency. Ravi’s history of Tamil media journeys parallel to the history of
main stream publication, he problematizes all the claims The Hindu makes
to celebrate. For example, see the parallel narration of both of the history,

G.
Subramaniya Iyer, who started The Hindu and Swadesamitram,
founded the Madrass Maha Jana Sabha in association with Anandacharyulu,
Rangaianh Naidu and Ramasamy Mudaliyar in May 1884. However eight years early,
Pandit Iyothee Thass had founded the Advaisananda Sabha in the Nilgris in 1876,
he founded the Dravida Maha Sabha in 1891. The Hindu was founded in
September 1878 with an investment of just Rs.1 and 12 annas- that too as a
loan. Started as a weekly with eight pages selling for 4 annas, it initially
had a print run of only eighty copies. Fifteen years later, in October 1893,
Rettaimalai Srinivasan founded the magazine Parayan. It was started as a
monthly with four pages for 2 annas. The total cost of production, including
the advertisement, was Rs. 10. His reason for starting a magazine like Parayan
was ‘So, those belonging to the parayar community should come forward
openly to say, ‘I am Pariah’. Otherwise, he cannot enjoy freedom. He will lead
the life of the suppressed and remain poor’. There is no doubt that The
Hindu, which has not bothered to employ a single dalit in its 125 years of
history, had the same ‘progressive’ attitude even during the time of
Subramaniya Iyer. So he goes on saying that dalits very actively realized the
importance of media as a powerful tool, but the representation of dalits in
mainstream media is very minimal.

He quotes Jeffrey who says,

‘If
you ask an Indian journalist, ‘do you know any dalit journalist?’ the answer
could be a long pause and then, ‘could you give me a couple of days?’ sometimes
it was a considerate ‘no’. There were some dalit journalists in Malayala
Manorama, but they worked in less significant position. Ravikumar ends this
dalit version of media history with the hope of dalit will someday understand
their ability to produce a national daily as did they hundred years ago.

Kukai
by
cho.Dharman

This
long short story is a mixture of different imageries and metaphors. The central
character is an owl which comes as the savour of the poor people of the
village. The relation of a child and its protection by an owl is very powerful.
The new generation would be saved by the alien, dirty night bird. The owl also becomes
a mother/sister figure of the story.The
couple, Cheeni and his wife were thinking to grow crow, but accidently they
discovers an owl and understand owl is very much related to their life. The
village is dry and un-rainy and Cheeni’s act again suspected the villagers, and
they are doubtful of such a sinful act of worshipping an owl, instead of
accepting the socially normed deities and this intensifies their anger. Cheeni and
his wife are adorning their dresses with owl shaped.

Cheeni
with his wife go for a journey forever. Then he gets chance to prove that owl
is the protector of the village when he come across the Gengaiah Nayakkar.

‘Why
then you want to leave?’

Dont
you know everything? I can’t but worship the owl!’

‘You
silly fellow! Who would ever worship mudevi in one’s house?’

‘Even
if it’s mudevi, was it not the owl that saved my child and ensured my progeny?’

‘You
are right. I take that point. For so many generations my family has only one
child, and that child too happens to be a male. Ask your owl god to give me
another child. Or at least ask it to make that one child a girl. If that
happens, I build a big temple for the owl, in this very village, and consecrate
it’.

‘Here
smear it on your forehead. Apply some on your wife’ as well. Next year you will
have a son. Then year after it will be a girl, but it will not live as a girl.’

This
girl also very important, she embodies the owl life and saves the people.

When
Cheeni comes back to his village after long years, everything is changed. In a
village where not a blade of grass could be seen except during monsoon, there
was greenery everywhere. The appearance of the owl is described as ‘Suddenly,
the din of birds clamouring could be heard. The branches rustled as the birds
flew out. They circled around one tree and cried out. Akkaiah Nayakkar stood up
and walked towards it. Cheeni followed him. On a newly cut branch,, freshly
sprouting at the edges, sat an owl. All the birds attacked the owl and to tried
to chase it away. The owl fled jumping from trees to trees in search of a
hideout. The birds kept chasing it away.

‘What’s
this bird? I have never seen it here.’

‘Saami,
this is the night bird. We call it kukai, the owl. This bird is the real
owner, the authority of this forest. This primeval bird knows not swift flight.
Nor can it hide to escape attack. The colourful birds which came later drove it
out of the forest. The owl lamented and cried for justice. You do not know how
to sing. Or cry. Or speak. You do not have colourful plumes. Nor can you dance
with feathers fanned out. You are the sinner that eats flesh. The other birds
drove away the owl with these words.

The
story suddenly speaks about the dalits who were the first inhabitants of the
earth. And despite their strong history and knowledge they forgot to retaliate
to the late comers of colourful birds. The story is very powerful and written
in a very skilful way. The translator of the story admits, Kukai is a
challenging novel to translate. If the words peculiar to the karisal region
pose difficulties for translation into mainstream standard language, the
metaphorical brilliance and the narrative structure, which is not slotted into
chapters and sub-sections, puts demands on creative abilities that academic translators
may not posses’. (pg. 104)

4

Here
I point out some absents in the text. Lackness and silence are always projected
in any work. Firstly for some dalits, this book is literally a ‘no alphabet in
sight’. When it’s a strong word against the marginalization and sidelined, some
dalit writers did not get a space in the book. At least skipping of two dalit
writers is not justified. The absence of Kandal Pokkundan and Kaviyoor Murali
raises some serious questions.

Who
is Kallen Pokudan? Pokkudan is a dalit, in its true meaning. He rejected his
autobiography for its imperfection. If we can consider a book is a child of an
author, Pokkudan considers his first autobiography (incidentally it is the
first new-dali autobiography of a dalit ever written in Malayalam!) as
premature birth. After publishing, Kandalkadukalkkidayiel Ente Jeevitham
was widely recognized. In its zenith of publicity Pokkudan recognized the
silence of a dalit life in the autobiography. He understood the way the
interviewer diverted the issue of caste over the idea of class. He disowned Kandalkkadukalkkidayil
Ente Geevitham (My Life among the Mangroves). Thaha Madai, the
chronicler, was accused of diluting the political aspects of the Dalit
environmental activist’s life. To allegations that it paid little to no
attention to Pokkudan’s Dalit identity and concomitant political implications,
Thaha Madai retorts that the intention from the start was to focus on
Pokkudan’s struggles as a local environmental activist, not his caste identity.
After a controversy the publisher, DC Book decided on Pokkudan’s version and
came out with a more comprehensive and more authentic version, titled Ente
Geevitham (My Life), transcribed by his son Sreejith. That moment he
started to write the dalit part of his life. As a reader, one has the right to
see Pokkudan in the book. In the last pages of the book, Yesudasan pains saying
there is no dalit autobiography born yet.

It is very significant that the
dalit community in Kerala has not produced a single autobiography yet. I
am not sure if this observation is true. The inference that only a
community which has self-confidence can produce autobiographies may
perhaps be true. Literacy and politics might play important roles as well. We
must not forget the fact that Ayyankali, the greatest dalit of Kerala, was
himself illiterate. (Emphasize added)

(TM Yesudasan; Towards a
Prologue to Dalit Studies, pp. 625)

That
means he has not at all aware about the fact that a dalit called Kallen
Pokkudan has written his dalit life! His autobiography was published in 2007 by
the prestigious publisher DC Books and it was celebrated for being the first of
its kind of genre. Though the autobiography skipped the very serious life
experience of Pokkudan, and projected his political and environmental activism,
still the ill treatment of the caste people came in the book here and there.
The important thing was his denial of a good name. Dalits were prohibited to
christian their child with a good name. Why Pokkudan was named as Pokkudan,
because his pokkil (umbilical cord was too long), so he got that name, Pokkudan
right from his birth. He again wrote his dalit life with the help of his son
and other dalit writers. But to him, at least the title of the book is very
meaningful; ‘No Alphabet in Sight’.

Anyway when the
reading comes to the Malayalam section, one feels the powerful current of the
dalit writing has just stopped or at least faded away. In Tamil Nadu, the dalit
creativity is very powerful, it is multi-faceted, sharp, poly-linear,
colourful, but when we reaches to the ‘Malayalam Sector’, the whole dalit issue
revolves round a single issue of land reform. Re-reading of much acclaimed Land
Reform, the land issue itself, and the govermentality
of the Kerala government are very vital and these should be questioned, but
when it is a dossier of dalit writing, it suddenly reduces its focus to this
issue. For example, CK Janu gets a space in the book though she is not a dalit
in a ‘literal sense’. If we consider the Maharashtra Dalit Panther’s
definition, all adivasis, landless, women are coming under the category of
dalit nad here CK Janu comes in this all these three category, but in her
interview the difference between dalit and adivassi are more obvious. Each line
of her interview says dalits and adivasis have different issues to look after.
She says:

True, after
Muthanga, a distance (between dalits and adivasis) emerges. With the build-huts
protest, it is only the adivasis who get land, right? I think part of the
problem was that even though there was a huge dalit presence in the protest,
land was only given to adivasis. Also, the build hut protest happened in the
heart of the governemtn, in the city. It also got the attention of and supprto
fo the media. It was a struggle that got international recognition. But
Muthanga was basically a different kind of a struggle. The build-huts protest
was a symbolic struggle. The Muthanga protest was based on actually acquiring
land. I have my doubts how the dalit
friends understood both these protests. Muthanga was more risky. There was the
possibility that clashes, fightsand conflict would emerge. It is to be
determined how many people have the stamina to go through with such a struggle.

(CK Janu, We Need
to Build Huts all over Kerala, Again and Again, pp 444-5)

Here she actually
raises serious psychic problem of dalit who attends any of the struggle. Dalits
are afraid the situation wherever a stamina needs to go with a struggle and are
suspecting the outcome of the struggle and its benefit. I was saying that
Janu’s interview is included because she is talking about land struggle. Apart
from this, if dossier really wants to include any adivasi, it must be Narayan
who wrote the first adivasi novel in Malayalam literature and it got theKerala Sahitya Akademy Award.

Dalits are not a
single, homogenous category. It spreads through different religion and castes.
When a reader goes through the Malayalam section, s/he wonders the least depiction
of the multiple dalit lives there. Comparing with Tamil Nadu section, this
section is more linear and homogenous. Most of the writers are representing the
Dalit Christians (true, their marginality is also very central, but when it is
about the Malayalam dossier, all other sections are marginalized in the book).
The 90% of the authors are either from South Kerala or Dalit Christian! It is
not incidental. The life of northern Kerala dalits is minimal and silenced. Raghavan
Atholi, Pradeepan Pampirikkunnu and M Kunhaman are the three lone
representatives of the North Kerala. One wonders that do they have nothing to
say in this discussion. And the description of some authors are irrelevant. For
example, when Lovely Stephen is described, the descriptions goes on, ‘It was
during this period she met TM Yesudevan, then president of the CSI Youth
Movement and close to Dynamic Action. She married him in 1985 and both
decided to continue their social activism. However, Lovely and Yesudevan
maintained their contacts with the friends at Thiruvalla even after they
shifted to Kurichi.

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Reviews: An Appeal

Dear readers!

Idon't want any of my reviews on films, books or any other works to be a mere ACADEMIC one. I am trying to connect it with my life experiencesand add something interesting. Every time I look myself as its first reader.

and

I am writing you my pain and pleasure.. You well know how a post in a blog is born. So kindly read it and comment something. Your comments, whether its negative or positiveare highlyappreciated